I've been covering the business of news, information and entertainment in one form or another for more than 10 years. In February 2014, I moved to San Francisco to cover the tech beat. My primary focus is social media and digital media, but I'm interested in other aspects, including but not limited to the sharing economy, lifehacking, fitness & sports tech and the evolving culture of the Bay Area. In past incarnations I've worked at AOL, Conde Nast Portfolio, Radar and WWD. Circle me on Google+, follow me on Twitter or send me tips or ideas at jbercovici@forbes.com.

I’m not qualified to evaluate the scientific merit of Oz’s more out-there ideas. (That’s the department of my colleague Matthew Herper.) But it doesn’t take an advanced degree to recognize how goofy some of his endorsements have been. Below, a few of the most notable.

1. Dr. Oz thinks there might be something to this whole communicating-with-the-dead thing. He’s had self-proclaimed spiritual medium Cher Margolis on his show a couple times to perform psychic readings for his audience members and dispense advice. Oz tries to tie in what she does with mainstream medicine, talking about the medical benefits of making peace with one’s deceased loved ones (it lowers stress levels, natch) and showing brain scans that supposedly prove that a psychic enters “a different type of consciousness” during a reading. “Char, why do you think the medical community has been so resistant all these years about the kinds of things you’re talking about?” he asked her.

2. Dr. Oz wants you to spend more quality time getting to know your bowel movements. It’s safe to say that no widely syndicated daytime television host has ever devoted as much time to the appearance of fecal matter as he has. Oz thinks anyone who doesn’t examine their own stool is missing important cues about their diet and overall health. Want to know what your excrement should look like? Watch his “Poop Primer.” But try not to worry too much if your own waste doesn’t measure up. Stress is a killer.

3. Dr. Oz says having 200 orgasms a year will make you live six years longer. This one falls into the sounds-sillier-than-it is category. The idea that there’s a tie between sexual activity and general health isn’t really controversial, but the nature of the relationship isn’t as cut-and-dried as he makes it sound in his 200-a-year prescription. And, anyway, who wants to live another six years if you just have to spend them gazing into a toilet?

4. Dr. Oz puts the “home” in homeopathy. Of all the forms of alternative medicine out there, few have been as widely debunked as homeopathy, which involves diluting substances to almost unmeasurable concentrations and then using them as therapies. In a show on alternative pain treatments, here’s how his guest, Dr. Russ Greenfield, explained homeopathic remedies: “The essence of the medication — oh, let’s say the spirit of the medication — is imbibed and it sends a message to the body to heal itself.” Attempting to inject a note of skepticism, Oz said super-dilutions are “probably either safer or ineffective” when compared with other medicines. Then he revealed that his wife uses homeopathic treatments on his own children. You can’t ask for a stronger endorsement than that.

5. Dr. Oz thinks transplant surgery goes better with The Force. “But surely,” you’re saying, “Dr. Oz is just hyping most of this stuff because it makes for good television. When he changes into his scrubs to perform heart surgery at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, he checks all this hoodoo at the OR door, right?” From The New Yorker: “Reiki, the Japanese art of laying on hands, is based on the notion that an unseen, life-giving source of energy flows through our bodies. Oz hired a Reiki master named Julie Motz to stand in the operating room, where, she has said, she would attempt to harness ‘the body’s own energy to help patients survive risky operations, such as heart transplants.’”

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This post is excellent — brief, forceful and on point. However, you softened it unnecessarily when you said that homeopathy “involves diluting substances to almost unmeasurable concentrations.” I’d suggest you delete “almost.” For a homeopathic dilution of 20C, the original substance is present in a concentration of 10^-40, an amount so close to zero that God cannot tell the difference. One would have to start with (for example) 5.8 trillion metric tons of salt — a cube over six miles on a side — to have a single molecule of salt in the final preparation. Samuel Hahnemann did not know about molecules, so he had an excuse. The same cannot be said for Dr. Oz, who has disgraced himself and embarrassed every teacher he ever had in his pursuit of ratings.

Tell that to millions of people over 200 years who have been healed by homeopathy! Just because your small brain can’t explain how it works, doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. There’s too much proof to say it doesn’t.

Millions of people over thousands of years have also been firmly convinced that their ailments were caused by evil spirits. Homeopathy has been thoroughly studied over those 200 years, without a shred of credible evidence ever produced that it works — except, of course, for all those people who believe that homeopathy has driven away the spirits. Richard Feynman once said “Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” If you want to believe in homeopathy, knock yourself out. But if you want to convince me, produce a statistically sound double-blind study (preferably two) and we’ll talk.

And you know WHAT about alternative medical modalities? It looks like you only know technology and media. I’d rather hear from someone who has studied homeopathy or Reiki, or any natural medicine before I’d call something “wacky”. It shows ignorance.

I don’t watch his show, like I didn’t watch Oprah, but of course I’m aware of who they are. I especially know Dr. Oz’s credentials as a surgeon, which are impressive. So I may not totally agree, if at all, with his beliefs. (I DO believe in some of the same things, and I’ve listed them and the reasons why below.) However, what I like the best about a surgeon of Dr. Oz’s education, training and position is that he even KNOWS about such alternative treatments. I have yet to meet a doctor who knows anything beyond the RDA for vitamins, which the US gov’t admits is badly out of date. They certainly don’t bother to educate themselves about herbal or other alternative treatments or adjuncts to treatment. The fact that he does is, to me, impressive. Next, there is no question and there hasn’t been for decades that the mind/body connection is real. If you go into something difficult, like surgery, whether for yourself or as a surgeon performing it on a patient, the more positive you are, the better your chances a successful outcome will be. If Dr. Oz was performing cardiac surgery on someone I loved, I wouldn’t care if he had a Catholic priest, Native American shaman, and someone dressed as Yoda lined up to bless him with holy water (and all you Catholics out there who make fun of psychics, Reiki and the like, tell me: what exactly makes the tap water holy?), chant, and be told “the Force is with” him. If that’s what boosts his confidence, go with it! Last, since I don’t watch his show, I don’t know anything about his “obsession” with bowel movements. But as a former RN I do know that we were taught how important it is to track BMs in our patients. I know from personal experience with my grandmother, when I was still a student, after she’d had both of her legs amputated due to advanced diabetes and its complications, that because she was unable to move around physically, she became severely constipated and was in serious pain. Luckily, I recognized the symptoms of fecal impaction, for which the only relief is (and yes, I know this is going to disgust some people, but it has to be done) digital disimpaction. In patients like my grandmother, who had unstable angina, had undergone triple bypass surgery, and was literally a heartbeat away from a fatal MI or CVA (which is what killed her), it’s a matter of 6 of one or half a dozen of the other. We all have an artery that runs directly from the heart to the rectum. Whether it’s rock hard fecal matter pressing on it, or a healthcare provider using her gloved and well-lubricated finger to carefully chip away at the blockage, either may cause an arrythmia which could lead to full-blown cardiac arrest. No, it wasn’t a pleasant activity, but I would have blown my own brains out in order to give my heart to my grandmother, if the technology had existed then. So “pleasant” wasn’t a consideration. And once it was done, she, who had had so many surgeries, and so many doctors and nurses caring for her over the years, said honestly, and not just because I was her granddaughter, that I had “saved her life”. She meant it in that I had relieved some of the most uncomfortable pain there is, but in truth I may just have actually saved her life. And if I had to do it daily for her, I would have, especially if it would have kept her with me. How selfish is that? But I loved her more than anyone else in the world, and I didn’t want to lose her. And I know she hung on when she really would have liked to give up mostly for me. I wish I’d known then what I know now, because then I could have shown her true love, and released her from her obligation to me along with her constant pain. I didn’t learn that from Dr. Oz, but anyone who does will be the better for it, as long as they don’t think they have to hand over half their paychecks to feel the joy of talking with and feeling the love emanating from a departed loved one. 1)I personally do believe in an afterlife and in the ability to contact those who have died, especially where there is a strong, loving attachment, and I don’t think it’s necessary to pay a medium or channeler to do it. All you have to do is open your mind and heart. I’m lucky to feel my grandmother soothing me when I’m in great pain from the world’s worst headaches, and she’s been gone 30 years; 2) I too questioned Reiki, especially because of the severity of my headaches. But about 12 years ago a friend of a friend, who was a Reiki master, offered me a free session. I accepted (why not?), but grew VERY apprehensive when I walked into the nail salon where she was renting a back office. I can’t breathe those noxious fumes, and I was freaking out worrying how I’d drive home with that intense a headache. (I don’t care if I kill myself, but the thought of endangering others scares me enough that I’ve since surrendered my license.) Being that stressed, I was amazed when she gently WOKE me. I hadn’t expected to fall asleep, much less feel anything but worse pain from the fumes. But not only had I slept, my head felt the best it had for the past 6 years, and that lasted an entire week! I only wish Reiki was covered under my insurance plan 3) This is what I have always said about homeopathic medications: “If they work on an animal, who is unable to be accused of using mind over matter, then they work.” Both my sister and I treated our dogs with various homeopathic medications, and they worked, even on the extremely intelligent ones (and I’m talking genius level intelligence). Even with the heavy duty painkillers I take for my cluster headaches, on nights I still can’t fall asleep I take Hyland Company’s “Calmes Forte”, and even tho there’s basically nothing in the pills, it helps. Even my mother, who’s negative about basically everything, takes Calmes Forte to help her sleep. I also gave them to my dog when he was freaking out about thunderstorms. He preferred valium, so I had to shake them in an emptly valium bottle first, to cover them in the dust (I said he was smart), but he definitely wanted to take them. How else do you interpret his answering the question with one woof (yes; no was two) and then opening his mouth waiting for me to deposit the pills on the back of his tongue? I’ve found there are people who are stuck in the past as far as medical science goes, but the irony there is they don’t believe in anything still older than will anything newer. The opposite are those who believe in herbs and other remedies that medicine refers to as “New Age”, when in reality it’s the oldest kind of medicine there is. This man, with all his education, training and medical reputation on the line s willing to put his open-mindedness out there, and for that alone I commend him.

Thank you for confirming what I felt for some time now. I sent an email to the show a while ago disputing a DR. (a quack as far as I’m concerned). He said wheat bran was bad for you. I have a book by Jean Carp called Food Your Miracle Medicine Based on more than 10,000 Scientific Studies. Wheat bran has been found to be good for colon health and this has been proven over and over by many studies. Unless you have a wheat allergy, you should not stop eating whole grains for fiber. Dr. Oz went along with this nonsense and my email was never answered. I includes the studies as well. I started to watch todays show the bearded duck hunters or something like that they have a reality show which Dr. Oz watches, Duh! They took a skinned squirrel, the whole thing and were about to cook it I turned it off It made me feel sick. These people are radically religious but they have no respect for animals. How would a sensitive child feel seeing this on TV. Dr. Oz is totally insensitive! I will never watch this show again!